Daniel Bryan is a guy that’s seen it all and done it all in professional wrestling. He has had a lot of roles during his WWE career from a guy that once main evented WrestleMania to a color commentator during the Cruiserweight Classic and his current role as the Smackdown General Manager. Bryan also stars in two reality shows with his wife Brie Bella as part of Total Divas and Total Bellas.
This past Friday, Bryan was the guest on the popular Edge and Christian podcast where they talked a lot about breastfeeding (all three are new dads), injuries (all three retired due to injuries), Bryan went in depth about wanting to wrestle again (something he’s done in the past) and there was a lot about actual wrestling stuff too. One of the more interest parts of the discussion was when Bryan presented his theory about why WWE’s 205 Live show isn’t capturing the attention of the live crowds as well as the viewers at home.
Here’s how Bryan explained it with a thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcript:
“I think one of the things that they have a hard time with with 205 Live and the cruiserweights, is they do some incredible stuff, but do you know who else is doing incredible stuff? AJ Styles doing springboard 450 splashes, right? So to somebody who really knows, okay, the degree of difficulty, they may see Mustafa Ali do this incredible, I don’t even know what you call it, an inverted 450 splash or something, I don’t know, [but] it’s incredible. But to the casual fan, is that any more impressive than AJ Styles doing a springboard 450 splash? And he’s a main event guy who gets promo time and all this kind of stuff.”
Bryan makes a great point about a guy like Mustafa Ali. He does some incredible stuff in every match, but the crowd doesn’t really attach themselves to him because there are major stars like Styles that do similar moves. Plus, a lot of wrestling on 205 Live doesn’t showcase the aerial moves as much as you might think they would. You could probably watch some WCW matches from 20 years ago that have cruiserweights doing cooler moves, so to a lot of fans they feel like they’ve seen it already.
They also talked about some guys not in WWE right now including indy wrestling standouts Ricochet and Will Ospreay. Bryan praised both men for developing their characters.
“If you’re hoping to come in [to WWE] and stand out on your style alone as acrobatics, I think it’s going to be very hard to stand out if that’s just your thing. One of the things I’m really impressed with both is as I watch Ospreay develop, and like Ricochet, is that they’ve become also more personality-driven. Ricochet is now more character-driven than anybody [has] ever given him credit for. And you can see that in Will Ospreay. He’s more character-driven than anybody [has] given him credit for and he keeps developing that. And I think that’s kind of the genesis, where those guys will get over. It’s not because it’s not a guy with no personality coming in and doing a ton of awesome spots. It’s, ‘these guys are doing awesome spots, but also personality-driven and story-driven as opposed to just being like, ‘hey, look at the cool flips I can do!'”
It’s great that Bryan mentioned Ricochet and Ospreay because it might lead to some WWE fans checking out some of their work. They are much more than just two guys that do flips during their matches. Both of them could be in WWE one day too with Ricochet more likely to be there in the next year or two depending on his contract status.
For more on Bryan’s thoughts on the wrestling business, check out the most recent Edge and Christian podcast now.
